Posts by Sgt_Oddball

OSIRIS-REx successfully delivers NASA's first asteroid sample

Re: 11mph (18km/h)

No, I'm not having that at all...

The true conversion should be 0.0002%mvsv (Maximum Velocity of a Sheep in a Vacuum).

I mean what's the point of a standards bureau if no one sticks to the correct standards?

Man who nearly killed physical media returns with $60,000 vinyl turntable

That's a decent enough home office setup..

Though I'd look at a better cart for the Pro-ject (I'm partial to AT-115 carts on free vintage dual I've got in my home office).

New York City latest to sue Hyundai and Kia claiming their cars are too easy to steal

Re: The only option is....

Which is a nice thought until they all get the same idea and follow suit. Thus removing the choice (see mobile phones and integrated batteries, removal of headphone jacks, making them difficult to repair but fragile enough etc) from the consumer anyway.

Datacenter fire suppression system wasn't tested for years, then BOOM

Re: Tempt fate

Does that mean someone has to dial the emergency services?

So it's... 0118 999 881 999 119 725..........3

Building your own private 5G is as easy as Wi-Fi

Re: I've seen a mobile version of this in the flesh.

The contractor in question works in partnership with a rather large network in the UK... And spun the tech off their highly mobile, mobile cell towers (runs out the back of a L200 pickup so they can drive it up a mountain if need be).

So licencing of the airwaves isn't a problem for them. I was disappointed though the the SDR kit was some off-the-shelf Dell rack mount servers. All solid-state drives though so less issues with vibration.

I've seen a mobile version of this in the flesh.

Really good idea for managing devices over a wide area but not so large than regular networks would be preferable.

A good example was for music festivals, hand all vendors their own sims so they can accept card payments on a dedicated network, run video/audio over dedicated networks. All on some that won't be completely borked because of abit of rain or having the APs saturated because different vendors are trying to use WiFi for other none transaction data.

Thanks for fixing the computer lab. Now tell us why we shouldn’t expel you?

Re: Command.com

5¾"? I thought they were 5¼"? and besides, they weren't the first. The first floppies came on 8".

There was also lots of other bizarre formats and sizes, even on the same size disk on occasion (SD/DD/HD 3½" diskettes anyone?)

Uptime guarantees don't apply when you turn a machine off, then on again, to 'fix' it

Re: Automation needed

Generally for such boxes you make sure it's in a room that does not see a cleaning lady(or man, such things do exist). Secondly, the box might come up just fine but that doesn't mean the attached servers will automatically play nice, seeing the boxen mit blinkenliten immediately and carrying on their merry way.

Sometimes, you have to restart things in a specific order. Usually the order is passed down in arcane rites by grey beards in locations where the sun dare not shine. Sometimes you get lucky and just have to remind the servers that things exist again.

I've been there a few times, even more fun having UPS's ripple start only to have one release the arcane smoke thus causing further embuggerance after a lengthy power outage.

Lenovo Thinkpad X13s: The stealth Arm-powered laptop

Re: long-term Windows users are used to this and will barely notice

So not a developer then? The fun and games moving from Intel macs to Arm macs has been..... Interesting what with getting installers to work, rosetta to behave other misc stuff.

That said, fine once done and I'm still shocked at being able to work for a day in the office without worrying about bringing my charger with me.

How the Internet Archive faces potential destruction at the hands of Big Four publishers

Re: For those neigh saying..

Well... They are braying, snorting and stamping their feet...

If the (horse) shoe fits...........

Mines the barbour jacket with the thesaurus in the pocket.

For those neigh saying..

What about works that are out of print? Or rare versions with forwards/notes by interested parties?

Or for literature that is no longer in fashion but culturally relivent, or even heaven forbid has been altered in new editions in some meaningful way because the contents are no longer agreeable?

What of those from closed publishers? Whilst, yes... I will admit there is a certain amount of overreach, the sheer breadth of archived material is valuable in of itself especially when other archives aren't perfect (such as the service manual for a 20 year old CRT I own. Pdf versions OCD scanned the docs and used a random not available anywhere font for the parts list. IA had an actual scanned copy - no missing text).

Compromise and nuance should be agreed rather than tearing it all down. Especially things like the way back machine.

Why our solar-storm sats corrode – and probably not what you expected

In space....

No one can hear you steam...

Mines the one with the Nostromo patch...

Wow, so they actually let AI fly an F-16 fighter jet

Closer and closer each day...

We're getting to actually having an ACE Combat game become a reality... We've had shooting balloons, shooting satellites, ghost of ***** for an ace pilot, short range ground to air missile runs, and now we've got robot/AI controlled planes...

Life imitates art in weird ways sometimes.

(and yes I know I know it's a weird series but the plots in some can be really fun - AC:5 is a notible example as is AC:7 - we don't talk about 6..... Or Assault Horizon. Though that's drawing parallels as well)

Ring system discovered around dwarf planet Quaoar leaves astronomers puzzled

Properly married to their work..

These astronomers. They even put a ring on it.....

Mines the one with the towel in the pocket, I'll see myself out.

Cloudflare engineer broke rules – and a customer's website – with traffic throttle

They've at least done the right thing...

Own the issue, admitted it was human error due to procedural omissions and stated they'll make changes to remedy it from happening again in the same manner. They haven't said the fix was completely wrong, but that how it was applied, was.

If anything this actually gives some confidence in them and right now seeing the engineer punished wouldn't be worthwhile. If anything I'd say said engineer is now more qualified than any other to address similar incidents going forwards.

All in all, well done Cloudflare for putting this out there.

Teacher icon because every day is a school day.

Japan's NTT Docomo uses invisibility cloak tech to fix 5G reception

So for existing buildings...

Replace all the glass right? Got it.

BT in tests to beam down 5G coverage from the stratosphere

Re: Never mind commercial viability...

For fuel, its on hydrogen... As the article mentions.. Several times.

At any rate it looks to be easier to deploy than the current mobile cell towers (basically a flatbed truck with a bunch of server racks, a radio mast, a generator and four wheel drive to go up the side of a mountain).

I wonder if the private cell network system could also be run through this?

NASA Geotail spacecraft's 30-year mission ends after last data recorder fails

In fairness...

To those complaining they over-engineer, it's difficult to build a piece of equipment to last until the day the warranty expires when you're only building one or two of the type.

Now, if there was a mass produced, off-the-shelf, multi-config satellite that's cheap to launch....

Then yes. But when running a team for 30 years still costs less than building and launching it then overeengineering it is.

Meanwhile, in Japan, pet fish run up credit card bill on Nintendo Switch

Re: Gambling

Look there's a time and a plaice for that sort of thing...

Space mining startup prepping to launch 'demo' refinery... this April

Re: How does this work?

Look, can we not have mining vessels in space using reactors? I mean, we all know what happens when you scale this up and end up having a Cadmium II leak caused by bad welds from a maintenance engineer.

No good will come off this I tell you.

Mines the leather one with the Ace Rimmer fan club patch...

India uses emergency powers to order takedown of BBC documentary

Re: Unforgivable!

Admittedly yes. Finding Russian Cyrillic direct translations isn't something I spend much on. Probably should look at the 60's USSR children's books I've knocking around and see if it's in there.

Re: Unforgivable!

да товарищ!

<insert USSR national anthem/>

Ukraine slides closer to NATO with buckets of experience fending off Moscow's cyberattacks

Re: Centre of Excellence

I always wondered if there was ever an off-centre of excellence, personally I'd like to be considered to join a centre-left of excellence. Top-right feels too strict....

Mines with the. Self-help book "how to lose friends and alienate people", I'll see myself out.

8K? That’s cute. This display has 600 million pixels

Re: Oops

No, but can you play Crysis on it? (because, obligatory).

On a related note I wonder how many instances of some game (say Doom because you can run that on anything) you could run simultaneously? I'd assume some kind of raised seating would be required but it'd be fascinating to see how many could be reasonably played in parallel...

Let me X-plane: Boeing R&D unit sheds rudder, ailerons, flaps for DARPA project

Re: Stop me if you heard it before..

The nozzle vectoring I'm well aware of, it was more the forced air over control surfaces bit when it's not in normal flight mode. I vaguely remember something about adding air to prevent stalls at low speeds to increase lift over control surfaces and this just sounds like a modern take on that.

Stop me if you heard it before..

Doesn't this sound like an evolution of the way the control surfaces worked on the Harriers?

Honest question here rather than an invite for flaming.

Years late and 36 cores short of AMD, who are Intel’s 4th-gen Xeons even for?

Re: As a thought...

As an alternative...

Considering the noted statement that most of these features are useless unless using software specifically to take advantage of the features, could Intel not partner up with the software providers so that the software companies are the ones to pony-up, hold licences etc for these features since it otherwise sounds like those companies are after a free lunch on someone else's expenses (also known as moving a CAPEX to an OPEX for accounting fun)? Sounds like Intel are potentially missing a trick and getting closer to those utilising these features.

As a thought...

Or three..

1) If I bought one of these chips in a cheap, used server would I still be able to unlock extra features?

2) If so would that price have changed?

3) If the chips are no-longer supported directly by Intel would they provide the license to unlock this publicly? (like HP have done with old SAS raid arrays)

4) If not, can I turn off the features and get a refund?

5) Can a feature once unlocked be re-locked if required to say move the license onto a newer CPU down the line or is it locked to that chip?

I could go on...

German cartel watchdog objects to the way Google processes user data

Re: In Before...

Whole* races. Bloody autocorrect.

Re: In Before...

Whilst true, it was mainly for control of a population (hence the 'concentration' bit), we didn't turn them into camps for exterminating while races.

And for all our sins there's plenty of times where we weren't the bad guys (like stopping the old Indian tradition of adding wife's to a funeral pyre).

Look long enough at a people's history and no-one's society is clean, unblemished and without horrors unleashed on others.

So with that out of the way... Good on Germany for taking a stand, let's hope they follow through in a way that benefits all.

Robot seal tested for stress relief on pretend Mars mission

Re: "Most Theraputic Robot Guiness record"

Hudzen-10 surely?

Icon because of all the calculators going to silicon heaven....

Re: A seal?

Nah, I'd lean the other way - a high stress environment for the crew and send them with Thermostellar Bomb #20. That way they have something to talk to but that sense of danger to really give the crew something to worry over but control.

Nuke because... Well, it's what it was designed to do.

PC sales slump to pre-pandemic level in Q4. 'Boom' is over, says IDC

Re: It always amazes me how disconnected these "analyists" seem to be from reality.

No mention of enthusiasts no longer being enthusiastic over CPU/GPU vendors enthusiasm for price gauging, nor how the collapse of crypto (please... Someone make it stop - crypto I mean, not it's long overdue collapse) has reduced if not removed the need for higher end components having to be acquired by purchasing a whole pre-built machine?

(For a while the best way of buying a 3080 or 3090 was to buy a dell/lenovo and then flog the now gpu-less computer since it was less than what scalpers were asking).

JP Morgan must face suit from Ray-Ban maker after crooks drained $272m from accounts

Re: "co-launched augmented reality glasses with Meta"

I hope they come with different coloured lenses... Red and green... Round and rectangular.... Built by a machine high on it's own supply...

Mines the one in black with the bowel disruptor in the pocket.

Citizen Coder? Happiness Concierge? Here come 2023's business cards

You are Steve Bong

And I claim my five pounds.

As for migration, constantly....

Stop it. Stop it right now. Having someone who's job it is, is to keep merging, splitting and remerging stacks onto various platforms for the sake of what? Vanity?

For larger companies, the pain is real, it's like constantly moving house. For those who live in a one bedroom flat, that's not so problematic but when you have a 5 bedroom mansion complete with garden shed, 3 car garage and multiple loft-spaces constantly moving just makes everything worse. Stuff gets lost, things misplaced, people get fed up and move off, and by the time you've unpacked the last box you're moving again (and throwing away the nice plates while you're at it... Maybe a new car too....who needs CD collections anyway? Etc... You get the idea).

Anyways... No. Just no.

Is it that time again for the horse pills nurse? Mines the one with the fetching straps on the sleeves.

Non-binary DDR5 is finally coming to save your wallet

Re: Smoke and mirrors?

I had the dual core version of that....

Which then leads me to wonder, if it's parts binning to use chips that fail QA could we do the same I did with said AMD dual core and unlock the locked memory to get more bang for buck at the risk of toasting kit? (for the record mine only died a few years ago after 10ish years of service - so not a bad buy all things considered)

Nvidia revives canceled RTX 4080 as 'new' 12GB RTX 4070 TI

Pricing sorted?

I love your optimism...

The BOFH in me however is still trying to figure if I can get a full fat 4090 or even a 4080 on expenses...

In praise of MIDI, tech's hidden gift to humanity

I too did GCSE music on midi

Equipment. All recorded out onto DAT tape which was rather annoying since it meant I never did manage to save a copy of that eldritch horror sound I composed (it still brings me pleasure that I got a C for it but was the only composition they didn't play at our awards ceremony...).

The other point well made is that midi was, and still is cheap. The actual interconnect chipage is so cheap if can be stuffed onto pretty much anything...like the youngests new keyboard bought for £25 so she can drag it to school (we also have a hand-me-down piano at home, but as old as midi is, it's not victorian).

I might see if I can strap said cheapy keyboard to a laptop and see just how far we can take it.

NASA starts assessing Orion capsule for refurb

Re: Would I fly to the moon in a reused spaceship?

Which is a fine idea, right up until something serious breaks because whilst being thermal cycled a couple of times is fine, but many, many times can cause unforeseen consequences (not to say it can't be done, just that inspection processes need to be thorough).

It also changes the material costs, since materials to better handle the heat cycle tend to cost more. Alternatives are efforts like virgin galactic but then slowing down first becomes the big issue. It's all a rather fine balancing act.

Why did Microsoft just buy fiber optic cable company Lumenisity?

Re: I had similar thoughts years ago...

I suppose you'd have to purge it first before reapplying the vacuum. Though I would have thought you'd have the same issue even without a vacuum - if water gets in via capillary action I suppose it'd be an issue regardless (especially since water in the open tends to full of stuff that isn't water... Like sand, salt, biological matter etc which I'd assume would lead to "bad things™")

I had similar thoughts years ago...

To the hollow fibre concept but more as a medium to pass a current (idle thoughts on passing current over insulators similar to strip lighting, pretty sure it's highly impractical but still...).

On the speed of hollow fibres though I'd have to wonder on how altitude/humidity would affect said hollow tubes? Or if there would be some way of instead creating a vacuum (obviously not a perfect one, but the point still stands) in them since the maximum speed light can go at is the maximum velocity of sheep in a vacuum and all that.

Not all vendors' Arm-powered kit is created equally, benchmark fan finds

Really to get wider adoption....

We need more modular systems, upgradable cpu and memory seem to be the last great hurdle for this but that would also give less freedom to CPU makers since they'd need to build for everyone rather than tailor to a specific use case.

It's all abit awkward really.

DoJ worries messaging apps could hide evidence of crime, corruption

DoJ worries messaging apps could hide evidence of crime, corruption

In other news, water is wet, Pope declares "I am a Catholic" in shocking Vatican speech and bears in woods, the shocking truth...

And they say the wheels of justice turn slowly.

Britain has likely missed the boat for having a semiconductor industry

Re: Bah

If only we knew which waves they were.

It's about normal for the UK by this point. Anything that needs active investment, or ever protectionism from the government and they'd rather let whole industries sink. Innovation? Yes! Great, need investment to capitalise on that innovation? *sound of air been sucked in through teeth* "We're not sure about that... We'd much rather you took it and let some foreign entity commercialise it".

Even for private investment, we don't have the framework around it like in the States the encourage technology developments.

Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it for big tech

Re: re: I do it because I can

Of course they aren't, the internet says so...

Too soon? Amazon commissions FTX mini-series

I still don't get...

Why there are people so enamoured with Crypto? I've got a long standing "debate" going with a work colleague who admits bitcoin has no intrinsic benefit but still sees epherium as being of merit.

Me? Anything that has value because people say it does, anything that can be replicated (not the tokens themselves, but the platforms upon which they sit) so easily by anybody (regardless of qualification, because "disruption") is for most part generally has very little or deminishing value when examined closely by those of sound mind.

If you still consider crypto after all of this.... I've got a bridge to sell to you...

(pirate icon because at least they're honest)

GPU shipments saw biggest nosedive since noughties recession

Regarding the gamer grade cards...

Pretty sure alot of us are holding off until our current expense cards are totally outclassed and then we'll upgrade (begrudgingly).

I mean they've gone from something you were OK with getting a new one every few years and maybe was half the cost of your machine but now when the top of the range card requires about £2,000 investment in this economy feels like being gauged. Especially when that's only for the graphics card and a new power supply (because unless you've already got a 1000w one it's time to get your wallet out).

Also the card makers crying because the market collapsed is something of their own making when they profiteered so much from desperate gamers (who won't easily forget) and crypto miners (also profiteers trying to get money for burning electricity...)

Nvidia faces lawsuit for melting RTX 4090 cables as AMD has a laugh

Re: optimizing things

Ahh! So you're a waffle man!

The thing with connectors..

Is that even if they are initially seated well, send a load or high heat through them and they can move if not positively connected. This can then cause arcing, higher heat, rinse and repeat until melty goodness or worse.

AC current is even more fun since it literally vibrates. This can cause cables to become loose, again arcing ensues and melty goodness. Really annoying when it causes your otherwise perfectly fine heating timer to get melty. Thankfully not burnie too (good design and materials) otherwise electrical fire next to water heater is asking for a visit from the local fire brigade and awkward questions from building owners.

Cygnus cargo ship makes it to ISS with blanketed solar panel

Re: bovine ovarian cells (which could one day improve fertility treatments in space)

Speaking of blue things... I wonder if they've tested the effects of viagra in space? (considering the current ticket price, the current astro-tourists probably need them).

Alien icon because that's conceivably what the child would be...